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“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
~ Morpheus (The Matrix 1999)

Without a doubt, the owners of the highly coveted and insanely expensive NFL franchises chose the blue pill.

Those living within that Matrix have their own reality which is far from the reality of most who view their product or even labor within it. They have an agent whose purpose is to solve conflicts between their Matrix reality and the realm outside it. His name is . Their truth is whatever they will it to be.

The non-investigation of Kareem Hunt is merely the latest example of when their reality clashes with public expectation outside their Matrix.

Inside the Matrix Kareem Hunt is viewed as a cog within the machine capable of making game winning plays and adding value to their Matrix world. The woman who accused him is an abstract figure; someone who shouldn’t have touched their machinery if she wasn’t willing to accept the risk she could be injured. Within the Matrix there was no reason to inspect a functioning piece of equipment unless a brush with those outside the Matrix became inevitable and threatened their temporal reality.

Recently Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for the New York Times, and celebrated author released a book entitled “Big Game”. Leibovich has written numerous books on the privileged circle of politicians, moguls and socialites in Washington D.C. In “Big Game,” he enters the NFL Matrix.

A book review on Football Nation shares some excerpts and insights. After praising the work of Leibovich for its seamy details, the reviewer questions whether it should even exist, “There’s a case to be made that Leibovich’s beat shouldn’t exist, if only because of the even more compelling case that the class he so nimbly sketches should be walking around with ankle monitors on, at the very least.”

A glance inside the Matrix causes the writer to ponder the alternate reality he sees:

“The preening members of the NFL’s power elite are no less vain or ripe for the Leibovich Treatment than Sally Quinn’s party set; they’re also about equally bulletproof in terms of the protection their various privileges afford them. They’re probably less prepared for it, if only because they’re so unaccustomed to being written about quite this way. But also, here as there, it doesn’t really matter—the powerful tend to stay that way, and the various oafish disgraces and tossed-off idiocies they make just bead harmlessly atop the gilded surface of their fame like a cocktail on a Scotchgarded carpet.”

He compares them in power and swagger to a nation-state, “so insulated by privilege and power from both consequence and the contours of normal human behavior that they are only intermittently recognizable as people.”

I’m convinced there are at least four different realities in frequent collision. The NFL owners and their highest-ranking elites who took the blue pill and create their own reality. The Matrix has some lower dosage pills identical to their own, and selectively distributes those pills to their potential agents whose job is to impose the Matrix reality on those outside it. The effects of these pills are temporary, however, and those who ingest them eventually find themselves outside the Matrix they worked to preserve.

Most people didn’t take any pill at all. Their reality largely exists in a much narrower space, and focuses primarily on their intimate surroundings. Their interactions with the Matrix consists of consumption of their product and drifts from news cycle to news cycle when it conflicts with their conceptions of proper human behavior. A collision, here, a collision there, a spark of outrage, and then the reset button is pushed. Then, we have those who took the red pill, and like Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity, see fit to do battle against the machine in hopes of waking a humanity that doesn’t feel asleep nor see a need of awakening.

I think I stumbled upon the red pill by accident. Like most people, I used to react with the news cycles, expressing outrage when the Matrix collided with my own space and sense of reality. Like many others I found myself mesmerized by the product marketed by the Matrix, known as NFL Football. As a Patriots fan, Deflategate forced a collision between my reality and the Matrix. I couldn’t see any reason for Tom Brady to cheat in such a nonsensical manner as letting a tad of air out of footballs, but a part of me wanted to know the truth. Did he, or didn’t he?

I wandered closer to the rabbit hole as I observed astonished professors whose own reality collided with the Matrix, seeking to inform the public about the Ideal Gas Law. The professors were utterly astounded that a basic scientific principle apparently didn’t exist within the Matrix. I accepted their conclusions and anticipated that the Matrix would as well, ready for my reset button to be activated. I was mistaken.

What's the over-under on "retiring" just before then, to avoid taking responsibility for the inevitable shutdown?

This is an all-too-common tale in Corporate America. It's the classic pump-and-dump: pull some crap that artificially inflates the apparent value of your enterprise, then flee with your profits before the public catches on.

It's been going on since forever.

__________________
"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens" --- Talking Heads

If the powers that be can find an appointee that could hold the position with a grace, dignity, and respect it deserves (maybe Condoleezza?) they may very well decide to announce they’re moving in another direction and Rogers services will no longer be retained.

If the powers that be can find an appointee that could hold the position with a grace, dignity, and respect it deserves (maybe Condoleezza?) they may very well decide to announce they’re moving in another direction and Rogers services will no longer be retained.

Could also pave the way to a smooth settlement on a new CBA.

There's no way a new CBA gets done with still at the helm. He's not going to want to give up power.

...and I don't want to hear about how he makes the owners money. My dogs could run the league and make money at it.

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